San
Joaquin County
Biographies
HENRY C. THIESSEN, SR.
Henry Thiessen, Sr., who came to
this country eighteen years ago, where he has since made his home, was born in Elbing, West Prussia, near Danzig, Germany, February 3,
1863, a son of Ephraim and Louise (Mueller) Thiessen, also natives of
Germany. When our subject was seven
years old his parents moved to the province of Westphalia, Germany, where the
father became a laborer in the coal mines.
There were eight children in the family:
John, Louise, Ephraim, Henry, our subject, Karl, Martin, William and
Anna.
Henry Thiessen grew up and attended
the public schools, and at the age of fourteen he began working in the coal
mines, working for the following sixteen years, with the exception of two years
spent as a member of the infantry in the Imperial German army. At about thirty years of age he went into the
hog and horse-trading business at Lutgen, Dortmund,
Germany, where he also conducted a butcher shop, continuing there for ten
years; then he came to the United States and settled at Taylorville, Illinois,
where he worked for two years in the coal mines, when in 1904 he came to
California. He first located at Galt,
California, but remained only one month; then he began work on the Thornton
ranch at one dollar and twenty-five cents per day and remained six months; then
rented 100 acres at Sycamore Slough, where he farmed for a year; then came to
San Joaquin County and rented the old John Keller ranch of 160 acres on the
Kelly Road, six miles west of Lodi. He
operated this ranch and ran a dairy for eight years, when he bought the ranch
on which he lives, located four and a half miles northwest of Woodbridge,
containing 320 acres. Of this ranch
forty-eight acres are in producing vineyard; eight acres are in alfalfa, and
the balance devoted to general farming.
He also owns 188 acres on the Brack tract in the tules; he also
maintains a dairy of sixty cows; ten head of horses and a forty-five-horse-power
Holt tractor are used in the cultivation and development of this ranch and it
is irrigated from the Stockton-Mokelumne ditch.
Interested with Mr. Thiessen in this ranch and farming operations are
his three sons, Henry, William and Martin.
On March 28, 1887, in Westphalia,
Germany, Mr. Thiessen was married to Miss Fredericka Sprienkemper,
a native of Germany and a daughter of Henry and Fredericka (Kranfeldt)
Sprienkemper.
Her father was also a miner and there were four children in the
family: Henry, Fredericka, Wilhelmina,
and Lena. Her father lived to be fifty
years old, while the mother passed away at the age of forty-eight. Mr. and Mrs. Thiessen have had twelve
children, nine of whom are living:
Henry; William; Mrs. Annie Schultz; Martin; Lena, the wife of August Wiggett; Lizzetta, Mrs. William
Wiggett; Karl; Minnie, Mrs. Fred Wiggett; and Emma. In politics he is a Republican and he and his
family are members of the Lutheran Church.
Transcribed by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Page
1626. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
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